This paper discusses how we might evaluate different narratives of the English landscape (Fig. 4.1). Although such archaeology is characteristically presented in an atheoretical and particularistic way, it is, of course, embedded in a discourse of Englishness; so British colonial archaeology on the one hand and the W. G. Hoskins and O. G. S. Crawford tradition of local empirical studies are both key discourses, even if they rarely cross-reference each other. I will therefore look at how recent postcolonial views of landscape might help us critically evaluate different traditions (including the tradition of local empirical studies) with respect to a particular archaeological problem – the creation of the medieval English village.
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Johnson, M.H. (2008). Making a Home: Archaeologies of the Medieval English Village. In: Habu, J., Fawcett, C., Matsunaga, J.M. (eds) Evaluating Multiple Narratives. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71825-5_4
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